Lego Mindstorms NXT helps create synthetic bone

Hollywood scientists from Fringe to Bones give us a glamorous and exaggerated look into the lives of researchers. Most of those that work in R&D for a living only wish they had half the tools Dr. Walter Bishop uses on an episode-to-episode basis. Unfortunately, the reality is most in the field have to manufacture DIY creations to lend a helping hand to experiments, like the engineers at the Cambridge University.

The researchers there are working on creating artificial bone to utilize in their experiments for possible building applications. However, in order to create the synthetic bone, scientists had to dunk the sample into a calcium and protein beaker, rinse it, dunk it into a phosphate and protein beaker, and then repeat that process numerous times over the course of a few days.

Engineers had to find an inexpensive solution to automate this process without subjecting an intern to torture by mindless repetition. The solution came from PhD student Daniel Strange who decided to build a miniature crane machine out of Lego to dip the samples.

The Lego used is from the Mindstorms NXT robotic kit, which not only features the standard Lego bricks, but special software to setup any required movement. The software interface seems easy enough to navigate; just drag and drop certain icons that represent actions along a timeline. A simple up, down, up, move sequence on a loop doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult within this environment, as opposed to trying to program the entire thing using C++.

The video above is part of Google’s 2012 Science Fair video series, of which Lego is a partner.